So Much To Say: A Legal Podcast For People

In this episode, Megan & Jennifer welcome Heather Stevenson, General Counsel at Red Cell Partners, whose career path proves that bold moves can pay off. From starting as a litigator at Sullivan & Cromwell to owning and running a Boston juice bar, then returning to law to lead at the Boston Globe, and now at a tech incubation firm, Heather’s journey is anything but linear. She shares how entrepreneurial lessons, marathon training, and curiosity have shaped her leadership style, why personal connections matter more than perfect client alerts, and the boundaries that help her thrive as GC. This is a conversation about resilience, reinvention, and redefining what a legal career can look like.

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Creators and Guests

Host
Jennifer Ramsey
Host
Megan Senese

What is So Much To Say: A Legal Podcast For People?

Welcome to So Much To Say: A Legal Podcast For People. Where we explore behind-the-scenes of work, life, and everything in between. We're your hosts - Jennifer Ramsey and Megan Senese, and we're here to showcase the human side of the legal world, from marketing and consulting to the very real struggles of balancing work with being human. This isn’t your typical, dry legal show. We're bringing you real stories, candid conversations, and smart insights that remind you that outside of being a lawyer or legal marketer - what makes you human? So whether you’re navigating billable hours or breaking glass ceilings in a woman-owned practice, this podcast is for you. Stay human. Stay inspired. Namaste (or whatever keeps you human). 

Heather Stevenson: [00:00:00] When I think about the people who come back to me, um, professionally, now the things that they're coming back to me when I've met them at a networking event are not like, oh, we talked about this cool AI tool you're using and that's what I wanna talk about. It's not the tools you're using, it's not the substantive law.
You told me you were gonna run a marathon and I just signed up for one and I thought of you. And those can lead to business conversations. But what people come back to you for really is personal. I think at first.
Megan Senese: Welcome to So Much To Say: A Legal Podcast For People, where we dive into the beautiful chaos of work life and everything in between.
Outside of being a lawyer or a legal marketer, we wanna know what makes you human. And with that, let's
Jennifer Ramsey: get started. We are so incredibly thrilled and honored to welcome Heather Stevenson to our podcast today. Heather Stevenson's Career path is anything but linear, [00:01:00] and that's exactly what makes it so compelling.
Just one more reason why we're excited to hear from her today. She began her career as a litigator at Sullivan and Cromwell Left Big Law and then owned and ran a juice bar in Boston, which I like. That's it. A dream. Um, she returned to the legal world as a transactional attorney at the Boston Globe, where she rose to Deputy General Counsel, and today she serves as GC at Red Cell Partners, a technology incubation firm Heather has written about chasing a Boston marathon, qualifying time, hiking rim to rim to rim across the Grand Canyon in one day.
And this year she is training for her first ultra marathon in over a decade. So Heather, welcome. We're so excited to have you here today.
Heather Stevenson: Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and to talk to both of you.
Megan Senese: Oh, me too. How does it feel? I would like to ask this question a lot 'cause I always feel like.
I watch our guests while we read their [00:02:00] bios. How does it feel to hear all of your things read out loud accomplishments and achievements?
Heather Stevenson: You know, it's a reminder of um, just how random my career has been. And I think, you know, now there's a word for it. We call it non-linear. Yeah. Yeah, that wasn't always a thing that people talked about, at least for lawyers.
But yeah, I mean, it has been a little bit all over the place or nonlinear and so much fun. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Jennifer Ramsey: That's amazing. I have to ask, what drew you to opening and running? A juice bar because I, I have to tell you, when I read that about you, when, back when I was in big law with Megan, um, there was this little juice company here in San Diego called Soja Juice, which you've probably heard of.
Um, and at the time it was just its own [00:03:00] little locally owned business, um, run by two. People who I don't know, but they, I just was so. Curious and, and almost jealous. I'm like, how do you get to be the, like they would make this juice too and then they would, you know, sell it. I'm like, how does one get to that?
And then I think Coca-Cola took a minority or a majority stake in it, and it's like boom, you know, cash out, peace out, love you all. See you never again. Right. And I'm like, I want that to be my life. So I'm, I am. So I'd love to hear your story. How that happens: Coming from Law to Juice.
Heather Stevenson: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So in 20, my husband and I had just gotten married in 2013 and we're starting to think about what was next and we, he's a lawyer too. Um, I was.[00:04:00]
Of it, but increasingly realizing.
I enjoyed a lot of the people I worked with. I enjoyed some of the work, but overall it wasn't rewarding enough and I wanted to have a little bit more ownership of, um, kind of my career path and time. And so we started talking about a lot of different options and I explored a lot of different options.
Should I go to a boutique firm? Should I try to be a prosecutor? Should I try to clerk? Um, these, and the juice bar thing kind of started as a joke, at least a little bit of a joke. Um, we were actually training for an ultra at the time, which is funny you mentioned that. I'm training for the first one in over a decade and have been fueling, um, our training with acai smoothies, juices from juice generation in New [00:05:00] York, and absolutely loving it.
It was a great, like, healthy, delicious way to fuel. Um. Exercise and at the time there really weren't a lot of juice bars in Boston. There were no, what I would call full service juice bars, meaning you could get cold pressed juice plus juice they make there and smoothies. And so it went from kind of like, haha, wouldn't it be funny if we opened a juice bar too, that would be really cool.
What if we did. And downloaded one, those.
Over time, over, you know, many conversations over a series of months decided that it would be really fun. We'd love to try it, and the worst thing that could happen would be it would fail and we'd go do something else. So that's how we got there. It definitely started as a [00:06:00] joke. Not so funny now. Huh? Who's laughing now?
Jennifer Ramsey: That's amazing. So you and your husband did it together.
Heather Stevenson: We did in the beginning. Um, he really, it turned out, enjoyed the setup, the branding, the recipe development, and did not like running a business, being in the store, um, any of those things, and missed being a lawyer almost immediately and went back basically right after we got it up and running.
Jennifer Ramsey: Okay. How long, how long did you own and operate it?
Heather Stevenson: We had it for five years, but for this second part, with half of that, I was also practicing law. So we had, um, managers in place in the stores.
Jennifer Ramsey: That's so cool.
Megan Senese: Did you like being in the store? So while you were waiting for the managers to like come on board or while you started, did you like being that client, customer facing?
Heather Stevenson: I did. I mean, that also was not what I wanted to spend the next 40 years of my life, like being literally a food service worker, which there's nothing wrong with it, but it was [00:07:00] not, it's really, really hard work. It's hard, it's exhausting, and I was making much less money, making working much harder than I ever had as a lawyer.
But I loved the people. I met the conversations we got into. I think it was really, really useful in terms of, I can talk to anybody now about anything. I'm good. I can make like, keep conversation going. I myself sort of shy. Definitely not anymore. So too,
Jennifer Ramsey: That's such a cool thing to learn about yourself, you know, no matter how.
Old or advanced, we get in our life, like always these opportunities to learn a little bit about ourselves and like learning that about you. Now you're comfortable talking to anybody. I mean, that's just a really cool thing to know.
Heather Stevenson: I, I think it changed a little, like, I think I used to be shy and then I practiced talking to strangers and got more comfortable with it, and now I enjoy it.
Jennifer Ramsey: Practice, practice, practice.
Megan Senese: So when you're, okay, 'cause we, I love hearing this. Most of the lawyers [00:08:00] will say, well, I would say majority of the lawyers are saying like, I don't know what to say. Or like, I hate networking and I know you're a big LinkedIn poster, which is why we got connected in the first place and I get to hear about your story.
And um, like someone who used to run a juice bar and is now a general counsel, like, that seems interesting. I'd like to know more about that. And you share stories. You know, personal, you do all the right, you do all the right things. I guess my question here is, do you think that your, your shyness moved away because you're just constantly being like, fuck, can I help you?
Like, what do you like, what is your order? Like, how did, how did that, how do you, how did you translate? Two seemingly opposite things, right? Like this is just a come and go. Maybe you had regulars, but talk to us a little bit about how you were able to translate that into your, your practice now and what maybe some other lawyers, whether they're in big law or solo or general counsel, can do to like get more comfortable with their shyness.
Heather Stevenson: Yeah. So it wasn't just the like, what's your order? Here's your change. Sure. That [00:09:00] helped. Um, it was a mix of regulars and just other people who we would talk to while we were making their juice. So if people come in during the lunch rush, it's just crazy. Go, go, go. Nobody's talking to anybody. But our juice bar was open 12 hours a day and we were, we did not have a line all day, and some days I was in there, so it would be talking to people who looked forward or who looked annoyed.
Or whatever, while we were trying to get the juice going. And I think what I got good at was finding things that we were both interested enough in talking about, or at least that they were interested in talking about, and I was willing to talk about, and I think that's where the transferable skill is, is just getting comfortable, like asking questions at people.
I mean, that's half of it, you know. What did you do over the weekend? What are you excited about? You know, this summer whatcha reading for fun, right? It doesn't have to be some, um, big meaningful conversation, whether you're in the juice bar or a [00:10:00] networking context. People don't want you to go and be like, what's your number one compliance challenge?
Not a fun networking conversation. No.
Megan Senese: Yeah, no, and I, I, I love that so much and it, I think I, even as legal marketers and business developers. I fell into that trap, particularly since the majority of people we were servicing before. Believed it needed to be very complicated, right? Or really complex. And we would spend, I would spend a lot of time, you know, drafting up these like long outreach follow up for the lo on behalf of the lawyers to send to their general counsels.
And maybe they would respond, and maybe they wouldn't. Most of the time they didn't. And we'd have to come up with another strategy like, here's a long client alert and dah, dah, dah. And there's a time and place for that. But now in our, in our new lives. I have found with myself in terms of how I've we're building our business and also with our clients, it's exactly what you're talking about, which is personal and not that complicated.
And the outreach [00:11:00] strategy can literally just be like, how are you? What are you reading? Right. Simple and about people and more personal. So I love, I love that. And we get to, we also get to say, you know, we're hearing it from General Counsels specifically on
Heather Stevenson: our podcast. Right. Yeah, totally. I mean, when I think about the people who come back to me, um, professionally, now, the, the things that they're coming back to me when I've met them at a networking event are not like, oh, we talked about this cool AI tool you're using, and that's what I wanna talk about.
It's not the tools they're using, it's not the substantive law. It. You told me you were gonna run a marathon and I just signed up for one and I thought of you or my cousin starting a coffee shop. Do you have any tips? And those can lead to business conversations, but what people come back to you for really is personal, I think at first.
Jennifer Ramsey: Yeah. It's the little things. I think that it's like you remember things like that instead of [00:12:00] Yeah. Like, oh, what tools are you using? Okay. I was thinking, um, how do you think that? Your marathon and ultra marathon prowess and skills, like how do those make you a better lawyer?
Heather Stevenson: So I think the training for those things can make anyone a better lawyer no matter how.
Terrible runner you might be. And where I think I get the benefit from those things is when the hard things come up, lawyering when I'm trying to figure out a solution to a seemingly intractable problem when I'm trying to manage a series of, a group of really.
It kind of feels easier. It's like, well, if I could go do something like a sprint workout, I can handle this. This is the, this is the gentle part of [00:13:00] my day. At least I'm sitting still. I'm just using my brain and I think that's a huge benefit.
Jennifer Ramsey: My favorite Peloton instructor is Robin Ourone, and she is an ultra marathoner, like she, and she's run like
Heather Stevenson: and a lawyer.
Yes, girl. Do you know her? Do you know her, Heather? No. Oh my gosh. She's, she's really cool. Let's get her on. She's a badass.
Megan Senese: Who knows her? Who knows her? Let's get her on the show.
Jennifer Ramsey: Yeah. She is a badass like you, Heather. Like she, she got out at, I, I can't remember who. Where she worked. She was like a corporate or a litigate, corporate litigator corporate at some big
Heather Stevenson: firm.
Jennifer Ramsey: I think it was Paul Hastings maybe. And, but she got out of it and now, you know, the rest is history. But, um, escape. She's like, you two are very similar. That's so interesting. Well, thank you for saying that. She's,
Megan Senese: I keep seeing you making faces. Why are you making faces? Except that we're saying that you're a badass.
Accept it. Say yes. Thank you.
Jennifer Ramsey: Thank you. Badass is only on this, this, that should be our tagline [00:14:00] for this podcast, Megan. So much to say badass is only,
Megan Senese: I mean I love hearing about resilience 'cause there's a couple of studies, a couple of studies. I'm laughing 'cause now this sounds so mean. I'm just like beating up on lawyers and I'd have to pull out the stats but I'm just gonna say it and then we'll fact check it later.
But there are stats that say lawyers are like the least resistant resilient group of people and, and I think what's been really interesting. For, for me and in our new life now it's two and a half years of being in on the other side. On the other side is, I don't know if that's necessarily true.
I mean, I, I, I see the stats and I would've believed it when I was still in big law, but now having conversations like this with other people, people who are posting on LinkedIn and I'm having a bigger exposure to all kinds of lawyers, I keep finding more and more like very resilient people. Right. You have to, you have to be.
Really strong up here to do an ultra marathon or a marathon or any kind of consistent training like that to [00:15:00] get up and do it when you don't want to. Right. Talk to yourself and, and come up with those kinds of mantras. So I, I love hearing those kinds of things because I love turning anything kind of up on its head, right.
Upside down and, and redefining what, what all of that like, looks, looks like. So, okay. Talk to us a little bit about. I mean, I'm sure people are always so surprised, like a juice bar. I mean, that's the first thing that we, that we, we picked up, uh, and wanted to talk about, but talk to us about when, you know, your work life balance totally failed or you had like a super like messiness situation of like being a lawyer and how does that come with your, like, new identity Now you're not a juice bar owner anymore, now you're, now you're a general counsel and you went to a couple different, two different places after the juice bar.
So talk to us a little bit about what that progression looks like.
Heather Stevenson: Yeah, so I think fortunately I did a really good job being bad at work life balance early on and realized that so [00:16:00] that by the time I was going back to being a lawyer after the juice bar. I was a little more balanced. So in terms of time when I totally messed it up, I have a very clear memory of being a junior associate and working at the office until like 11:00 PM on some, you know, preparation for a court appearance that obviously I'm not doing anything I'm briefcases for.
But, um, you know, we've sent something off to the partner and so I go home and then wake up at 2:00 AM like, I've gone to sleep and I wake up at 2:00 AM to turn on his edits. I
There's no reason this even had to happen last night. Like this could have happened two weeks ago. The edits really didn't make it any better. The whole thing is stupid. And I think that's one of those things that happens a lot in big law. Um, and it's kind of just the price of doing business. At least for now, if you wanna be in big law, I [00:17:00] hope one day it'll change.
I don't think that associates are gonna change it. Business change.
Also times when balance was so
Neither. I'm gonna do this thing that I think is necessary for the business or I'm not, but it's up to me. And if the business fails, that's on me. And if it succeeds, that's largely on me too.
Megan Senese: Right. It's the I get to versus like I'm being told or I have to. Exactly. And if there was
Heather Stevenson: like a, a time crunch for, because somebody failed to plan, it was me, I failed to plan someone else.
Um. In. I was much more kind cognizant of like, how can.[00:18:00]
At the Globe was just like a terrific human, terrific boss. You know, if anything would encourage me to like to draw more boundaries than I probably was and now as gc, like I don't, do, I always get it right? Absolutely not. It's so hard to strike the right balance of some things that are truly urgent and also nobody's gonna die if I don't do them.
Megan Senese: Yeah, yeah. What, what's an example of like one of the boundaries that you put in place? Because I think that might be helpful. Actually, I just wanna know what kind of boundaries you've put in place. Like what do those look like? Tell me. We all need a little help with that. Yeah. What does that, what, like what, what's an example of something that you would've never done before in your old life, and what's like a new boundary that you've set in your, that's
Heather Stevenson: a good question.
Yeah. So, you know, I largely have to be available as needed. Day, day every day. Day from 6:30 PM until 8:00 PM unless it's a true emergency, we've gotten sued, [00:19:00] happens hour. I'm not available. I don't answer the phone. If C calls, I don't answer the phone. If my boss's director calls, I just text. I'll call back at eight and it's fine.
Everybody actually respects it and I think appreciates it. And those are obviously not a normal person's working hours anyway. Right. But if you're a gc, everything kind of moves and then something that's almost like, I dunno what the word for it. It's almost like a reverse boundary. I understand that my work is gonna seep over into personal time and it just has to, sometimes stuff has to get done at night, on the weekend, whatever it is.
So I will also, if I wanna exercise and I didn't get to do it before work, I'll exercise during the day and that's fine. And I block it on my calendar and a lot of my colleagues do that. I think it's, you know, it's not just in me realizing that it works, it goes to the red cell culture. We have a lot of athletes who, a lot of veterans who are just like their physical wellbeing is very important to them.[00:20:00]
It makes a huge, huge difference so that I don't have work-life balance or traditional, like working hours, but I get to live a big, happy life.
Jennifer Ramsey: I freaking love that. So I'm curious what your favorite part is. Being a GC is like, what is, you just like filling up your cup.
Heather Stevenson: Hmm. Oh God. I really like being in-house and being a GC.
I really like being in-house and being a GC, getting to help shape these early stage businesses. So we incubate companies, which means like I'm in there before the company even exists. Getting to a point where we believe in it as a business, I'm helping create C equity. We're making it into something that is so fun and it gets to blend my interest in the law with my passion for entrepreneurship without having to be in a juice bar all day.
So that's awesome.
Jennifer Ramsey: And then Yes, I love it's the perfect, it's the perfect combination, right? It's like a banana strawberry [00:21:00] smoothie. Oh my God.
Megan Senese: That's my favorite kind too, Jen, by the way. Woo woo.
Heather Stevenson: It's a good choice. Um, and then as I also love, just like leading and working with the team, I think that's really, really fun and I love it.
I'm fortunate to have a terrific team and because I came in as lawyer number one, I gotta pick everybody on my team, which has definitely added benefits and they're awesome.
Jennifer Ramsey: Yeah. I had this feeling you were gonna say team because just your vibe and aura is so lovely and approachable. I'm like, I bet you are an amazing leader.
Like, and mentor, you know? And so I was curious if like, leading a team was like part of your favorite part of your job. Yeah. Do you, would you, would you ever go back into big law or, or go back to private practice?
Heather Stevenson: Um, hard question snickered a little bit. I mean, I've learned to never say never. Right. Like a lot to start a juice bar and now I'm back practicing.
Sure. Right. But [00:22:00] also, it's not something I like. To do. And I think I've said enough negative things about big law that probably wants to hire me anyway. So think you're safe.
Jennifer Ramsey: Mm-hmm. Same with Megan. I was just
Megan Senese: gonna say, yeah, it's easy to shit on big law. I mean, and I, I had a reflective moment. I guess it was last week.
I don't know. I mean, I read a lot of LinkedIn posts, so I think it was last week where I talked about it. It's easy to shit on big law. 'cause there's so many places that are bad. Right? And there's so many places that are shitty. Culture at the same time. That really shaped a lot of us into. Certain mentalities for the better, right?
Like, and, and, and being high achieving and disciplined. And so, like, I'm, I'm thankful that I had that big law experience because it opened a shit ton of doors for me and for our business. And I'm sure the same thing for you too, Heather, right? Where people are like, oh, Sullivan, Cromwell, oh, so fancy, [00:23:00] right?
And it puts some extra credentials behind. Who you are, which you like , shouldn't matter, but it does. Um. Mm-hmm. And so, yeah, I've talked a lot of shit about big law, but big law hires us too. So like, you know, I mean, it's,
Jennifer Ramsey: It's like with anything, there's, there's good and bad pros and cons, right? And like if we can walk away learning a little bit of something about ourselves and I like, then it's.
I think it's all worthwhile in the end. Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully.
Heather Stevenson: I'm so grateful for my time in big law. I learned so much. I'm still in touch with some of the wonderful individual people. Even if I'm not thrilled with s's, like big picture decisions lately. Uhhuh Uhhuh, and like you said, it opened doors like I would not have been able to get an in-house job.
If the boss hiring me couldn't say, well, like she's got a weird profile, but look, she went to good schools and was at a big firm. So like, how, how bad can she be? Exactly. Yeah,
Megan Senese: exactly. And so there, you know, there's a place where I'm like, yes, I, there is part of me that gets to be like, [00:24:00] well, you know, kind of proud chest.
Like I, I, I'm a former biglaw and now I have my own business and also get to say whatever I wanna say. And so I, I totally resonate, which is probably why, how our content. We found each other in the first place. And so, I mean, I always, I always appreciate, you know, I kind of always appreciate that. I think what's so interesting to me is I think, so you are our first general counsel that's been on our show, so thank you for being number one.
The general counsel title and person I feel like is like this elusive up on a hill. At least this is how I have interpreted Jen, you can, you can like disagree or, or confirm, I'm
Jennifer Ramsey: agreeing, right? Like, like you, the creme la creme, the decision maker. Like gotta get in front of the general counsel, gotta get in front of them.
What's
Megan Senese: important to them.
Jennifer Ramsey: Yes,
Megan Senese: We gotta send them client alerts. We need to pitch to them, but make it good and they don't have that much time. So it's gotta be really short. But also like, let's, now I'm, again, I'm shitting a big law. Let's make the PowerPoint deck 500 [00:25:00] fucking slides so that they know every single thing about.
This firm this, now that we have you, and you're also telling us that what contacts are reaching out to you, it's about something personal, right? And not necessarily like, here's the latest. I mean, there's a place again, there's a place for the client compliance, regulatory update for new incubation firms.
I don't know what is, like what is important to you if you are hiring outside counsel. We wanna know what is important to you as a general counsel when you're going to make those kinds of decisions.
Heather Stevenson: Yeah, absolutely. We're, we're definitely hiring people. We're across cyber healthcare, national security, and venture capital.
And I'm not expert enough in all those things to do it on my own. So, you know, there's certain things that are table stakes that I almost don't even need to say. I need them to be responsive. Even though we're a smaller client, I need them to, you know, know the law. I need them to, you know. Reasonable rates or find a way to be really, really efficient.
I'll pay more [00:26:00] for somebody who's gonna get, you know, great results quickly. But then on top of that, I think it's really valuable when they understand kind of like the business landscape. So they need to understand our business on some level. You know, at least at a basic level, I think it is more my team's role to be able to fill the gaps with them in depth.
The landscape is good enough to come up with creative legal solutions because if the question is simple, I'm not calling them ourselves, whatever. But I really value kind of like minded thinking. Oriented. You know, people joke about in-house legal departments. Being the department of, no. There is nothing more frustrating as a client than paying somebody thousands of dollars to just come back with no.
Right. You can tell me. My proposal doesn't work, but what do I do instead? Right?[00:27:00]
Three hours
Megan Senese: paying for the associate editing at two o'clock in the morning.
It's helpful 'cause we, you know, we have exposure to so many lawyers and we have big law clients and we have small boutique clients in terms of our individual and we have some, um, varying size on the fractional side. But one of the things that we are constantly repeating back as business developers and legal marketers is like, you have to note the client's business.
And a lot of the times the lawyers will say. Yeah, I do. And then we're like, well, did you see this thing in the news or that thing in the news? And they're like, no. Right. So I mean, I, it's a, it's a fine balance, right? Like we, we get that. But I just figured while we had an actual real live person, general counsel to hear some of those things.
'cause we also, one of the things that came up a bunch, and this might be too formal because you guys are on the smaller side, but it's client feedback. [00:28:00] And not to take this like a completely different path, but like general counsels historically have said, we want. To come to us and ask, we wanna tell you how you're doing, but no one's asking us.
Like, do firms ask you like, how are we doing so far? Do people ask you for your, their feedback on, your feedback on their like, work product and review?
Heather Stevenson: Yeah, so I tend to just give it unsolicited at the extremes. So if everything's going fine, you know, I'm reasonably happy because I keep bringing you business.
If somebody does something that I think is really phenomenal, especially if it's an associate, I make an effort to tell the relationship partner. Um, and I've had a few times where I, you know, can you put this associate on the next deal because they were so.
I'd love to see them make partner and I think, you know, partner basically said like, they'll, it's just not time. Um, or if something's going poorly and if something's going poorly, it's [00:29:00] definitely feedback I'm gonna give, although I won't always do it the same way. So if it's a partner who's under delivering, sometimes I'm telling them other times, I'm just not giving them any more business and telling the primary relationship partner.
And I haven't had a situation where the relationship partner was really bad, but if they were, I would just let them know that we're moving on.
Jennifer Ramsey: Mm-hmm. Yeah. One thing when we were in big law, Heather, and if a lawyer, a partner, had a relationship with you, like they were, you know, a client or maybe you, maybe you were a prospective client, but they, they know you really well.
We would, we would encourage the partner to invite you. To commit to our offices for, well, if you're a client, like a strategy or a planning meeting or like, Hey Heather, what, what are you looking at for the next 3, 6, 9 months? Like, you know, things like that. If we had identified that. Yep. We, we, Heather, she's a great client.
We wanna continue to grow that relationship and [00:30:00] encourage our lawyers as business developers reach out and invite you in surprise. They never wanted to do it. There was this assumption that, um, oh, well, Heather's busy, whatever the assumption was. Right. Maybe it's, you're too busy. Maybe you would say no, maybe, you know, like, I can't do that.
You know? Maybe it was, it was the partners. Shyness or, I'm just curious, like if, if you had your, an outside lawyer would come to you and say, you know, we'd love to have you into our offices, you and your team, we'd love to pick your brain about what's going on. Like, how, how would that land with you?
Heather Stevenson: It would be great and the intention would obviously be to win more business, but also if we already like you and have a good relationship, I think I would be open to it.
That said, at least for my team and our lawyers, not only my team, but our lawyers are literally all over the place. I would not fly everybody in [00:31:00] for something like that. I would maybe sit on Zoom for an hour or something, but it's weird in the remote age.
Jennifer Ramsey: It is. You're totally right. And that's a great point.
Like, I think, I think for people listening to this, like if we do have private practitioners out there and people like looking and especially younger or junior lawyers who are trying to figure out how can I, how can I develop better relationships with outside counsel? We position it like developing relationships rather than developing business.
You gotta develop the relationship. Hopefully the business will come. But I, you know, I want them to be encouraged listening to, like hearing that you would be open to that. Maybe a zoom, not a, not a flight, but you know, you would be willing to have a conversation. I was just curious 'cause I always thought that would be so good.
We call 'em trust points rather than touch points. But I always thought that would be such a lovely trust point if lawyers would actually reach out to general counsel and invite them to share what is [00:32:00] going on in their world. Um, you know, because that's how else are they really gonna get to know your business to your point.
You know, we can put together all the re we would put together so much research and it was damn good research about the company. Like what about you? We would do a whole workup on you and your, and that you love ultramarathon.
But, but it, but it's, but the point is to further develop the relationship so that you know that we care about you and your team and your business. And, um, you know, we could do that till the cows come home. I'm from Iowa, so I use these Iowans. Um, but you know, it never was, it was like they, half the time they wouldn't read the research, so it's like, ha, you know, having a conversation.
Getting to know you, getting to know your business, like I think it's just kind of a no brainer way to do it. So if anyone out there is still listening at this point,
Heather Stevenson: So we had an outside lawyer do something similar to that that I thought was super effective. [00:33:00] And so it was not red, it was one of our incubations, but they were having a strategy day, so they were all flying to one place and they were basically in a pretty early stage.
I think they'd raised a little money and brainstormed. This lawyer who had not done any work for them, but had a connection. I don't remember exactly what it was just said, listen, can I come for free? Sit in your meetings all day and maybe I can give you some. And he weighed in with a bunch of actual business more than legal points, but they were spot on and so they were excited to work with him and did give him and his firm business some related to what they talked about that day.
Some not at all, but they just have been, you know, happy to have him.
Megan Senese: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's a great story. You know who that, you know who that reminds me of, Jen. Who, well, I'm not gonna say his name, but, um, oh
Jennifer Ramsey: Yeah. I think we'll text each other after this. I, yes. Yeah.
Megan Senese: Like technology. A technology.
Like tell me like Yeah. Who used [00:34:00] to do stuff like that all the time. But he was, like , rare. He was like one of the few that would be like, why aren't people doing this? And we'd be like, I dunno, I dunno why people aren't doing this. Um, no. So we appreciate that we were getting to like, share some and, and bestow some general counsel, um, insight.
I wanted to take one last kind of moment about why LinkedIn. Like why do you like, why do you post on LinkedIn? And also how can we help you? How can we support you? What do you like? What do you need? How can we be of service to you?
Heather Stevenson: Thank you. Um, so I started on LinkedIn because I was, when I was early in my time at the Globe, so I was a practicing lawyer in Boston when I had only practiced law in New York.
And if anyone in Boston knew me, it was as a juice bar lady and I needed to develop a professional relationship or reputation as a lawyer. And so I actually started thinking it would be a good way to get to know lawyers locally in Boston. Some [00:35:00] extent, but obviously something much more. Um, I found that I really enjoyed it and I started having mentorship type conversations, um, out it mentorship super important to me.
I'm on the board legal mentor network and LinkedIn is almost like a mentor at scale, right? Like you can share things. People in one little post, which is so awesome. Um, so I like that about it. And then I've also just met so many fantastic people through it, so I keep doing that. And then kind of related to that, and in terms of how you can help me, I recently started a newsletter called In-House Outside the Box for.
Who wanna build a career they love, maybe not following the traditional rules, taking linear. So it fits into the box. You can subscribe at the link in my LinkedIn profile.
Megan Senese: Yeah. Oh, I love that. And I love that so much. And we will, [00:36:00] we'll put it in our show notes, which I've now noticed that they're hyperlinked if you're in the app, but not on the desktop.
They don't do that. I don't know why. So anyway, but we will, we will hyperlink, um, to the sign. Uh, for your, for your newsletter. We love that. We love that so much. So this will be the time where I usually kick it over to Jen, and Jen will take us out. Yes.
Jennifer Ramsey: Well, thank you Heather, so much for joining us today.
It has been so lovely, and I don't know if yoga is part of your, your athletic regimen, but I am, um, the in-house stage yogi, I teach yoga as my little side hustle and. So I think yes, it's lovely. And so we always like to close out our podcast with Stay human, stay inspired, and Mama stay until we meet again.
Megan Senese: I love that so much. Thank you. Okay, that's it for today. Join us next time on So Much To Say: A Legal Podcast For People [00:37:00] for people can't get enough of us. Visit us at www.stage.guide.